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Facebook can’t fix its ‘fake-news’ problem

(AP PHOTO)

The first step toward solving a problem is admitting you have one, so the conventional wisdom goes. Facebook, it seems, has taken that first step when it comes to acknowledging that many, many people fall for hoax stories that appear in their feed. (I have another word for these stories that I can’t print here: it rhymes with “full snit”.)

This week the social media giant (or digital ad-agency behemoth, if you prefer) announced plans to add a new feature to the news feed that it hopes will help readers determine if a story is true or a hoax. Soon it will roll out a Related Articles feature that will show links to other stories beneath a post that might verify, fact-check or contradict what the original post says.

That’s a noble effort. But I submit that the problem of news hoaxes permeating the Facebook ecosystem has more to do with the ecosystem than with gullible users. The social network is a closed system that discourages leaving. Several years ago, in fact, Facebook rolled out its Instant Articles feature for publishers, ostensibly so their news articles would load faster. What it also does, though, is keep people from leaving Facebook and exploring a site elsewhere on the internet. Publishers gained the advantage of fast page loads on mobile devices — which sounds nerdy but is critically important if you’re a publisher — but they didn’t gain much in the way of revenue. As Casey Newton points out in an April 16 Verge article:

Facebook was careful not to guarantee that publishers would see expanded reach from Instant Articles. But it seemed likely that Facebook would favor the instant links, given that the articles loaded up to 10 times faster and kept users glued to the company’s flagship app. “In the beginning, having access to Instant will provide a huge advantage over publications that don’t,” wrote John Herrman, whose Content Wars series in The Awl had warned publishers that Facebook would ultimately change the terms of any deal to benefit itself. “Eventually, publishers’ numbers will even out as competition increases.”

The problem with a closed ecosystem is that diversity eventually gives way to homogeneity. Facebook has become an effective echo chamber for people on the left and the right to reinforce their views and demonize the other side.

That might have happened over the last decade with or without Facebook. But the only way to keep the social network from becoming an unwitting disseminator of bogus news is to have people stop getting their news from Facebook.

How they do that is anybody’s guess.

Digital Watch is a blog about technology, media and anything that fits in those categories. Send feedback, hate mail and tips to arichter@readingeagle.com. Find me on Twitter: @AdamRichterRE.